


Out of Excuses

by bexorz



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Ableist Language, Angst, Antagonistic Relationship, Electrocution, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Getting to Know Each Other, Gore, Hallucinations, M/M, Nightmares, Peter gets his Privilege checked, Self Harm, Slow Build, Suicide, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6453985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexorz/pseuds/bexorz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deadpool is homeless, and Spider-Man is reluctant to help him because he can't stand the man. Sure, Deadpool might have a few screws loose, but this time it's more complicated than that.</p><p>------</p><p>((This story is back!! I promise regular updates now, as I switch between this and my other longfic!))</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shoot into the Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> Rating, archive warnings, and tags will change as this work is added to. I promise nobody is going to die that you'll miss.
> 
> Comments welcome!

It was the perfect night for web-swinging. New York City was enjoying clear skies, a bright full moon, and early spring temperatures that meant Peter would not get overheated from the exertion. The rhythmic rush and pull of gravity with each swing he made was nothing new to Peter, but on occasions like this when he was able to let go of his surface thoughts, and just _feel_ his way around the city, it was always especially enjoyable. Moments of weightlessness balanced with the whoosh of air over his body and the centripetal force pulling his organs down into his pelvis, then he was up in the air again.

“Yeeeeeah- _HOO!_ ”

Midair, before he shot off another webline, Peter threw his limbs out as he launched himself through the air. The freedom and the relative quiet hundreds of feet in the air were the perfect backdrop for his stress-relief. He didn’t even care how much web fluid he was using up—this was cheaper than therapy.

As he rounded a corner, he took the opportunity to squirt a web covering Jameson’s face on a nearby billboard. The man had been ranting about him over the airwaves with nastier vigor than usual lately, and had contributed to the growing hum of constant anxiety Peter was feeling. A little petty revenge never hurt anyone. The webbing wouldn’t last, but it was satisfying regardless.

On all fronts in his life—personal, professional, and vigilante—Peter had been running himself ragged over the past few months. While the Parker Luck™ hadn’t been bothering him overmuch, he’d been dragging himself in too many directions mentally and physically. The enjoyment and the mental focus that this exercise afforded him was invaluable.

He would not risk summoning his abominable luck by remarking to himself what a relief it was that things were quiet that night, and that he hadn’t seen anyone that needed saving.

Turning to once more cross midtown, he began swinging up to his comfort limit, timing his movements and webline placement to reach max speed at the bottom of his swings. At some point in time he had done the math, and had calculated that he could easily reach over sixty miles per hour at those points. So he’d gone a step further and figured out all the other factors to increase that speed. Length of line, height of the anchor point, how long after releasing his last web, etcetera. Eventually he’d have to actually set up a radar for it to see how much he’d been able to increase it.

Peter’s Spidey-sense flashed at him, tingling along his scalp a moment before he heard a shotgun blast from a nearby rooftop. A cloud of pigeons fled in his direction, dropping feathers back down to earth.

“Aaaand there’s that luck,” he said to himself. He braced himself against the multiple impacts—there were too many birds for him to dodge. He couldn’t even _think_ about his bad luck without summoning it, apparently. He threw an arm over his face to protect it.

“Get lost!” he heard below.

“Hey! You know it’s against safety regulations to discharge a firearm in the city without a permit?” Spider-Man latched a web onto a nearby water tower to adjust his heading, and dropped down to attach himself to it. This gave him a decent view of the roof where the offender stood. He couldn’t make out the figure standing in the shadow under the water tower, but the voice he’d heard had been male.

“Yoink!” He shot a line to grab the weapon, and at the moment he yanked it out of the man’s hands it went off again. Birdshot whizzed past his head and he spat a curse into his mask. He caught the shotgun and webbed it to the water tower—hopefully out of reach of the perpetrator.

“Whoa! Webs, buddy! Take it easy!” Into the moonlight stepped Deadpool, hands up in surrender. Over his red outfit he wore a tattered and dirty brown trench coat, which had ruined his silhouette and his color. That was why Peter hadn’t recognized him.

“Deadpool,” Spider-Man said, the tension in his body easing, though not by much. His ears were still ringing from the blast. “What’s going on? What the hell are you shooting at?” He pointed a finger. “And I am _not_ your buddy. Were you shooting at _me?_ ”

There was no one else around. The noise of the streets was far below and muted, leaving only the sound of nearby televisions and radios from open windows. He didn’t know what else the lunatic would have been shooting at.

“Whoa hey, if I wanted to shoot you, you’d be shot, man,” Deadpool said, shrugging his arms in an exaggerated gesture.

Not one for sitting still very often, Spider-Man jumped and landed on the roof near the other man—though not too near. Deadpool had the tendency to reek of blood and taco sauce.

Spider-Man crossed his arms. “I’ll give you five seconds to give me a logical explanation for this bullshit before I clock you and drag you to the police.”

“The pigeons, it was the pigeons!” Deadpool pointed off into the sky in the direction the flock had escaped. Then he pointed to his face, where Spider-Man noticed a big smear of what unmistakably looked like bird shit. “You see what they did to me?”

Spider-Man put a hand to his face and shook his head. “I cannot believe my evening was ruined for this,” he muttered to himself.

“Say, while you’re here, you wanna grab a beer or something?”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Deadpool spun around on one heel and marched a couple paces away from Spider-Man. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking: you can’t possibly be seen in public with me while I’ve got bird shit on my face. I can scrape it off easy, no need to worry about your reputation.” Pulling off the trench coat, he stepped over to the water tower and started swinging it up towards his shotgun. Trying to knock it down, Spider-Man supposed.

“You’re not getting that down. I don’t want some lunatic with a gun going off half-cocked at every stupid little thing.” Spider-Man began to pace back and forth, debating what he should do about Deadpool. If anything. It was incredibly tempting to swing away and leave well enough alone. As far as Deadpool was concerned, a bird shitting on his face was as logical an explanation as anything for his behavior.

That was part of the problem. The only thing that was predictable about Deadpool was his complete unpredictability, but if the Avengers hadn’t bothered rounding him up, then Spider-Man didn’t want to waste his energy trying to do it either.

The mercenary froze with his arm in the air, and turned over his shoulder to look at Spider-Man. “Oh _no_ , no no, I’m never half-cocked. I’m always full-cocked, honey.”

Peter rolled his eyes, but since the action wasn’t visible under his mask, he gave a visible shudder to show his disgust. “Before I decide what to do with your smelly hide, do you care to tell me what you were doing up here where birds are pooping on you?”

“Sure.” Deadpool jerked a thumb behind him. “I was minding my own business sleeping in that shed over there. You know those damn birds have nests up in there? It’s like they’ve never heard of nails before.”

“Sleeping?” _Nails?_ What was he talking about? The nails people use to keep birds from perching on things? Could the man ever get a sentence straight?

Spider-Man flipped up to the water tower so he wouldn’t have to pass directly by Deadpool to get to where the man had pointed. Sure enough, there was a maintenance shed near the entrance to the roof-access stairwell. The door was wide open, and a broken padlock lay on the ground nearby. The inside was just as you’d expect a tool shed to be, except there was a pile of rotten fabric in one corner. Is that what the guy was using for a bed? “Oi. Do I even _want_ to know why you’re sleeping in there?”

“Hrmph.” Deadpool wiped the back of his glove over the stain on his mask. “If you have to know, my last landlord disapproved of the rabbits. I didn’t even get my deposit back.”

Spider-Man narrowed his eyes. “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t want to _think_ about what that could possibly mean.” It was definitely time to go. Another show of acrobatics sent him to the edge of the roof. “I’m leaving now. Bye.”

He shot off a webline, and was about to yank away when he heard Deadpool again.

“Wait!”

The man scrambled over towards him, old leather boots scuffing in the unswept rooftop dirt in his haste. A few meters away from Spider-Man he tripped on his own feet, and did a genuine face plant.

“Wow. Just, wow.” Spider-Man said. “What could you _possibly_ want from me?” His fingers twitched on the webline. He was anxious to leave and try to regain some semblance of the peace he’d felt earlier.

Deadpool pulled his mask up to his nose and coughed.

“Hit-Monkey isn’t after you again, is he? If he is, you’re on your own this time. I’m not dealing with that shit tonight.” Besides, he now knew that Deadpool was virtually impossible to kill, which he hadn’t when the Hit-Monkey incident had begun. The guy could handle it.

“No, shut up!” Deadpool snarled.

“Whatever, I’m—“

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Deadpool stood up and brushed off his pants. “But I was wondering, ah, since you’re here—“

Spider-Man rolled his hand in a “hurry it up” gesture.

“You mind if I crash at your place for tonight?”

“Oh my god are you actually serious.” Spider-Man said. This was growing more aggravating by the moment.

“As a gunshot wound.”

“That’s not funny.”

“That’s why it’s serious!” Deadpool sighed. “Look, ok, maybe not for the night, but I could use a place to do some laundry and have a shower.”

“There is absolutely _no_ way I’m letting you anywhere near my apartment. Why don’t you get your own place?”

“I told you, the rabbits—“

“Yeah, like I’d believe that story. That’s not even a story, it’s a non-sequitur.”

Deadpool hissed over his shoulder. “I told you he wouldn’t buy it!”

“Again: wow. Bye.” Spider-Man leapt off the roof.

“But a shower!” came the mercenary’s voice, growing smaller as Spider-Man got further away.

“Get a gym membership!” Spider-Man shouted back at him.

As he swung down the block, some small voice in the back of Peter’s mind nagged him. Deadpool sleeping in a shed on a roof somewhere was a surprise. Didn’t the guy have a hideout, or safe house, or whatever a pseudo-villain would have? He wondered if Deadpool even counted as a villain.

What was he thinking? Of course Deadpool was a villain, even if he’d occasionally worked with Spider-Man, or some members of the Avengers, and even if he’d done SHIELD a favor with the zombie Presidents. He was still a murderer. _And you’re feeling bad for leaving him to sleep in a pile of trash._ Except, if he was sleeping in trash, it was his own fault. The man made his own life choices that led him to where he is now. 

_Like you’ve never been railroaded into anything before_.

Wonderful, now Peter was arguing with himself. That little episode had officially drained every ounce of euphoria that his web-swinging had brought him. All Peter could do now was turn the rest of his night into a regular patrol. Maybe if he was able to stop a few purse snatchers, he could wash the conflicted feelings out of his brain and regain some focus.

Deadpool was a grown-ass adult, and he could take care of himself.


	2. Calamari-For-Brains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Deadpool's mind short circuits. Some clues as to why he's homeless emerge. Peter has been worrying about their last meeting. There are some very esoteric movie references.
> 
> Content warnings: Suicide, self harm, ableist language, nightmares.
> 
> I promise this fic is going to end happily. Cross my heart. ;n; And if it doesn't... I'll just have to write a sequel.

Spider-Man was leaving. He was leaving Deadpool behind, and wasn’t going to help him. That was not entirely unexpected. Why the hell would such a stand up guy like Spidey want to help a loser like him?

“I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.” Wade sighed to himself, feeling wistful even as he felt disappointment surge through him.

_What a fine, fine view you have, Wade._

**There is absolutely no excuse for him to look that nice.**

_I’m almost jealous._

**With a rear that sculpted he’s gotta be ugly in the face.**

_I don’t think Wade has any space to complain in that area_.

“That kind of talk is _completely_ uncalled for. I’ve seen enough of Spidey’s face to know he definitely _ain’t_ been hit by any ugly stick.”

This was a new problem for him. Or, an old problem that had come back again. Wade had gotten used to things calming down in his head over the last couple of years. He hadn’t suffered any serious “episodes” since long before the dead Presidents job, and he hadn’t had any extra voices in his head, either. Not since Madcap had been evacuated. That had taken some adjusting, but once he’d gotten used to it he definitely preferred the decrease in number of confrontational voices he had to contend with.

Was he even remembering any of that correctly? Had that even happened?

“What’s this fucking continuity anyway? What issue are we on?”

**The one where the guy does the thing.**

_Oh yeah! And the_ stuff _happens, too, right?_

**But not before that other thing!**

_And not before this next bit happens._

“Would you fuckers shut up for a minute? I’m trying to think. I need to focus, _I can’t focus!_ ” Deadpool tightened his grip on the roof’s ledge, digging his fingers into the brick until the pressure started to hurt.

**That’s why your teachers sent you to the special doctor.**

_And you got the special pills._

**All obnoxious little boys get the special pills.**

Maybe he could pull the trick of focusing on pain? He’d seen that in an anime once, and it had worked pretty good. On second thought, no, that wouldn’t work, pain was too common for him. He lived with it every fucking day. He needed something else, something new. That’s why he’d wanted the shower.

**Psh, yeah, a shower’s definitely new for you.**

_Pee-yew!_

Out of the corner of his eye, Wade saw something slithering around his hand, with an accompanying sensation. He looked down, and jumped back when a pile of snakes wrapped around his palm. “Shit! Shit!”

**Cut them in half!**

_Chop them to bits!_

With a practiced motion, Wade pulled a knife from the sheath strapped to his thigh. Flicking his wrist, he neatly severed the snakes, sending bloody stumps flying into the air.

_Now you’ve done it._

**Good job, champ!**

“That’ll teach you to mess with me, you stupid… slithery things!” Deadpool crowed in triumph. It did not immediately occur to him to wonder where the snakes had come from.

It took a moment before he realized that there had not actually been any snakes. He stared confused at the spurting stumps of his fingers before the pain set in. When it did, it hit him surprisingly hard. He dropped the knife and clutched his wrist, swearing and screaming and rolling on his back on the ground. Blood pumped freely, splashing on his mask and soaking into what was left of his glove.

 **Don’t be such a fucking baby**.

_You’ve had worse._

“That’s not the point!”

Fuck, what was _happening_ to him? Some part of him had hoped— Some part of him had hoped he was at least marginally getting better.

_You’ll never get better, Wade. You’re a psychotic fuck-up for life._

**You’re gonna live a long fucking time, too.**

_You’ll get to enjoy that shit forever._

This was worse than the rabbits. Well, maybe not worse than the rabbits; the rabbits had been pretty fucking bad. He was also pretty sure that he wasn’t going to be able to enjoy Monty Python and the Holy Grail ever again, after what happened with the rabbits. At least the only one hurt by this was him. Unless the bloody chunks of his fingers happened to fall on someone’s head down on the street below, that is. Deadpool figured that that would be traumatic enough to send someone to therapy.

**You’re the one who needs therapy.**

At least this definitely wasn’t as bad as cows, Deadpool thought.

_That can be arranged too, if you want._

“Fuck no, give me snakes and rabbits, do _not_ give me cows!” Clenching what was left of his fist, he got back to his feet by bracing himself against the low wall around the roof and pushing off from there. There were plenty of spare rags in the shed he could wrap his hand up in until the fingers grew back. At least they _would_ grow back.

The sensation of his flesh knitting and regrowing in his hand still felt like snakes, though. He had to resist the urge to saw his entire hand off.

Deadpool needed a quiet place to think. A place to get away from distractions, a place to get away from the street noise, from apartments, from that Chilean midget that kept finding him while he was taking a dump.

**What is with that guy anyway?**

_I think we stole his chimichangas._

**Maybe we should stop doing that.**

_¡Vivemos al lote!_

He’d been hoping that Spider-Man could help him. There was no way he’d be able to claw his way out of whatever new tank of chaotic filth his mind had dropped into this time, not if he had to do it alone. He trusted Spider-Man to not let him hurt anyone. He didn’t want to hurt anyone.

A little voice—another voice anyway—maybe it was his own voice this time?—a small voice reminded him he’d already hurt plenty of people—and what did he care?

_Why do you trust him?_

**He left you alone here.**

_He doesn’t give a shit._

“Of course he wouldn’t let me come to his apartment! He’s got a _secret identity!_ ” He sat down on his rag-pile bed and ripped a long strip from an old shirt. It immediately darkened with blood as he wrapped it around his hand.

**Yeah but you helped him with Chameleon.**

_Who’s that?_

**Oh wait, that’s not in this story.**

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Wade growled, and punched himself in the side of the head several times. “We didn’t actually _tell_ Spidey that we —I—were having a problem. If I had, I know he would've helped me.”

He sighed and stopped hitting himself. “I mean… maybe?”

_That’s a lot of faith you’re putting in the guy for maybe._

**Nobody likes you, Wade.**

_They barely tolerate you._

**You’re way too good at burning your bridges.**

“Why would anyone want to be your friend,” Wade muttered into his elbow, finishing the thought before the other voice could. He curled up on the pile of rags. Was he really hearing voices again, or were his own thoughts so jumbled up that he couldn’t tell the difference anymore? Did it even matter if it was one or the other?

 _Spider-Man will never help you._ **You realize he hates you, right?** _Just like everyone you love or admire hates you._ **They’ll never respect you no matter how much you change.** _No matter how much you help them._ **You’ll be pathetic forever** _forever_ **and ever** _and ever_

“Shut up!” Wade screamed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!!” Yanking one of his guns out, he pressed it up under his chin and squeezed the trigger.

At least his hand will have grown back by the time he wakes up.

  


Thick, heavy darkness was all that he could see, all he could feel. For a while, anyway. It was suffocating, choking, _squeezing_. At the same time, because it was all-consuming, it afforded some semblance of peace and quiet. No matter how uncomfortable it was. If all he could think about was the pressure in his throat, and if all he could feel was the burning in his lungs, and nothing else existed in the void of that black expanse, it might just be better than his waking life was.

He didn’t drown. This was not drowning—it was something else.

Down, far below, an angry red glow began to rise up out of the murk. It was not good. He looked up and saw clear sunlight dimly filtering through the ocean of dark in which he floated. Was he drowning after all? It rippled above him, quiet and far away, yet promising hope and an end of the chaos. That’s where he wanted to be. The deep was no longer peaceful; it wanted to eat him alive.

He scissored his feet, kicking through the water, beating his arms, dragging himself up towards that light. It was difficult with no air, and the water was thick as blood. It slowed him down, gummed up between his fingers and toes—was he naked?—and then something latched around his ankle. Reaching down, he grabbed it to yank it off of him.

Then there were more. Dozens of squid, or tentacles, or some sort of nightmare fuel wrapping all around his limbs, dragging him back down. They locked his arms to his sides, bound themselves around his head, blocked his ears, his nostrils, wiggled down his throat. Dragged him down deeper into the bloody depths, to the furious red glow beneath.

“Ga-HACK!”

Deadpool shot awake with a start, coughing and sputtering, clutching at his throat. Lifting the bottom of his mask, he took in big gulps of air, stretching his lungs until they started to hurt. Just to satisfy himself that he could breathe.

**Johnny Five is alive!**

_Time to find us a curly-haired animal freak._

**Stat!**

_Does Spider-Man count as an animal freak?_

**Some would say yes.**

Ugh, what was that smell? That was the _nasty_ smell of dead fish rotting. He knew that smell. That was the smell that had happened when he’d thought it had been a good idea to bring a string of fish he’d caught (by tossing a grenade into a pond), and tie them up to the faucet in the bath tub for a week. Was that smell why he’d been dreaming of squid? Had he really been dreaming about squid?

Since when did he dream like that when he’d shot himself in the head? How could you dream when your brain matter was turned to mush?

**Like moldy cottage cheese.**

_Large curd or small curd?_

**Small curd, obviously, with the caliber of that gun he used.**

Also, since when is such a strong smell of rotting fish and sea water a common aroma on a rooftop on the upper east side? Where the fuck was he? “Malfunction. Need input.”

**Ha ha! He’s doing it!**

_I bet you five dollars I can get him to do the disassemble bit._

**No dice. Don’t want to drag that joke out too long.**

Taking stock of his surroundings, Deadpool realized that he was nowhere near where he had put himself out of his misery. It was dark out, that much was obvious. Probably the wee hours of the morning. Was it the same night, or the night after? No way to know. He was lying on some old, discarded fishing nets at the edge of a pier. This was unusual. It couldn’t be a blackout; he hadn’t been drinking. Also, since when do people with no brain tissue walk around?

**Braaiiinnsss…**

“I ain’t no zombie,” he said. “My face ain’t _that_ bad. At least I’m still pink.”

_True enough._

“Piiiink elephants on parade~” Sitting up, he rubbed the back of his head with his left hand, bare fingers picking at the crusty edge of the hole in his mask where the bullet and his brains had blown through it. Maybe he should’ve taken it off before he killed himself? He didn’t have any spares lying around.

“Wait a second. Wait just a _damn_ second.” Wade hopped to his feet and stared across the water at the skyline on the other side. “I’m on the wrong side of the fucking Hudson!”

**Shit, we’re in New Jersey.**

_Nnnooooooooo!_

“AUGH!” Wade clutched at his head, and turned to rush away from the water. He tripped over torn bits of netting, and hopped around flailing on one foot as he attempted to shake it off his boot. “Let go! Let go! How the fuck did I get to New Jersey?!”

**Musta swam here.**

_No other explanation for this fuckery._

Was that what his dream had been about? “Fuck, at least I didn’t wake up in a fire. I hate human barbecue.” Then again, even he wouldn’t wake up in a fire. He’d wake up _after_ the fire. It had happened before; although he couldn’t remember where or when. What he did know was that he had never woken up while still in a fire.

Quiet voices, quieter than the loud ones intruding on his thoughts, whispered around his head. Gritting his teeth, he did his best to ignore them, though they quickly began to tickle on the inside of his ears. As if he could actually hear it.

“This is your fault, isn’t it?” he said. “I definitely need that shower now.”

_I bet they’ve got plenty of gyms in Hoboken._

**So Spider-Sham wasn’t completely useless.**

_It was a pretty good idea._

**Nobody would mind if you snuck in for a wash.**

_Or you could just jump in the river_.

“I am _not_ jumping in the river. What if there are leeches?”

**Disregarding the filthy water.**

“Shut up and let me figure this out!”

It took half an hour—and a lot of arguing with himself—before Deadpool was breaking into the back door of the first gym he found off Marshall Street. The smell of the pool was too strong, and was nauseating for him after he’d been covered in dock filth. It would do fine for cleaning his suit, though, so he hopped in fully clothed to scrub it a little before stripping out of it to shower.

**They probably won’t appreciate blood in the water.**

_As if little children don’t piss and shit in this water?_

**I guess that’s what the chlorine is for.**

_Yeah nobody’s going to notice._

In the shower, the spray of hot water pouring over him felt a hell of a lot better than even he’d hoped for, although he could _really_ go for a Swedish masseuse working him over too. That thought didn’t even summon a nasty comment from the voices plaguing him, which was a testament to how much better the shower made him feel.

Wade spent a few minutes sitting naked on the lid of the swimsuit spin-dryer, singing the Bee Gees while he let his suit dry. As much as it could dry in one of those machines, anyway.

**Thank god there’s no mirror over here.**

Shit. The voices were already back. Wade squeezed his eyes shut, plugged his ears, and sang louder. “ _More than a woman to me!_ ”

_Spider-Man is not a woman._

**We won’t hold that against him.**

_You’re right, would rather hold him against us._

Deadpool’s suit was still damp when he put it on, making it somewhat difficult to squeeze into, but he managed ok. After raiding the snack machines he left the gym, and hoofed it to the Lincoln Tunnel entrance. Hiding in the back of a truck, he hitched a ride back to Manhattan. He needed to retrieve his weapons and find somewhere more secure to park himself. Either he was sleep walking, or he was having memory blackouts again. Neither situation was good, and he was going to have to do something about it. First, he’d have to figure out the _why_. And Spider-Man was a pretty smart fellow, right?

It hadn’t been this bad in a long time. Even when he wasn’t replying to their commentary, the dialogue running in his head wouldn’t stop.

“Get it together, Deadpool. You’re losing it.”

**Whoa buddy, you lost it a _long_ time ago.**

Wade sighed. “I know.”

_Oh god now he’s all sad._

**Don’t worry, my guy! At least there aren’t any cows.**

Dawn was creeping across the sky by the time he got off the truck and made his way across Central Park. People that he passed on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth, both because be was Deadpool, and because he was swearing and muttering loudly about how much he hated New Jersey. The muttering only stopped when he made it up to the rooftop he’d left behind, however many hours ago. Maybe he could get some sleep for a while before he went in search of somewhere else to tuck himself away.

Except… it was the wrong roof. There was no water tower, no tool shed, no stashed weapons in said shed, no pile of rags he was calling a bed.

“What… the fuck?”

 **Loser** _loser_ **Pathetic** _pathetic_

“But it was _right here!_ ”

_Obviously that is not the case._

**Bwomp bwomp!**

This situation left Deadpool with fewer options. He couldn’t spend all day looking for the rooftop he’d lost. If he ran into Spidey, maybe he could ask the guy if he remembered where it had been. Looking for Spider-Man would probably be easier. The man was pretty flashy with his web-swinging and everything. Failing that, he could always hop back to one of his remaining safe houses temporarily to raid the stash there before he went to find something better.

**You could just stay there. The place you’ve got west of here has a decent mattress.**

_But you don’t want it to end up like the last one._

“Right, the rabbits.”

**But there weren’t any rabbits.**

_You blew up the place for no reason._

**I suppose there _could_ have been rabbits.**

“Stop it about the rabbits! I don’t want any collateral damage.”

In the meantime, the best plan he could think of was to make a quick stop at his place in Harlem for a jacket, and a backpack to stuff his guns in. No explosives this time. Then he could tuck himself up under a highway overpass to try and get some actual sleep.

On the way, he picked up a half dozen hot dogs from a street vendor, because he was absolutely starving. He had no idea when was the last time he ate something besides the snacks from the gym. The food coma would help him sleep, hopefully.

As he passed out to the sound of cars roaring across concrete and asphalt, he hoped even harder that he would be waking up right where he fell asleep, this time.

  


It was a week after Spider-Man had found Deadpool squatting in a tool shed, and Peter was still preoccupied with the encounter. Despite working sixty hours a week, between his Horizon internship and his job at the Bugle, despite at least five hours a night being Spider-Man, despite surviving on ramen, caffeine, vitamin pills, and the occasional bite of real food, he was preoccupied over Deadpool. He had already been reprimanded for falling asleep at his desk; staring into space trying to analyze a lunatic’s behavior was not helping him any.

Then again, maybe it was the long hours and frayed nerves that had him returning to the subject over and over rather than letting it go.

The team at Horizon that he was currently working with was developing enhanced bio-fabric technology. This would have revolutionary application in medical fields where patients had suffered grievous wounds, and even those who had disfiguring scars. Peter had never seen Deadpool’s full face, but from what he had seen, and from what he’d heard from other heroes, the man was scarred like that all over. As if he had been burned on every inch of skin.

That was another logical reason why Peter kept thinking about him. One of the team leaders had posted photographs on the main work board of burn patients, as some sort of twisted motivational effort. _These are the people we’re trying to help._ Every time Peter put his eyes on them, he thought more about Deadpool than he did about hospital patients. It had gotten bad enough that he had started to go out of his way to not pass the board on the way to his work space.

Asking Spider-Man if he wanted to go for a beer is one thing. That, Peter would expect from the mercenary. It had happened before, on multiple occasions, he’d said no each time. Deadpool had always brushed it off with a, “Hey no prob, maybe next time!” as if he really believed there’d be a next time.

Had to admire that sort of tenacity. Maybe.

Asking for access to a shower, though? Asking for help with laundry? That was unusually domestic, and unusually sincere. There were plenty of places that the guy could easily take care of both those things. Why on earth would he ask for that sort of help from Spider-Man? It didn’t make sense for him to be asking for something so mundane. The puzzle and its implications had Peter feeling the slightest bit of regret that he hadn’t pried further into Deadpool’s intentions before he’d left that night.

Working through equations on his laptop, Peter was so bleary and distracted that he was only vaguely aware when one of the other team members flipped on the big TV hanging in the corner of the room. It was locked to a 24-hour news and weather station, which he would normally pay attention to, in case he needed to rush off in costume, but right then he was—

“Is that Spider-Man?” someone said.

Peter jerked to attention, turning his eyes to the screen and to the conversation of the growing crowd of people around the TV.

“That’s not Spider-Man,” someone else replied. “That’s Deadpool.”

“No, I mean the face. Why’s he painting Spider-Man’s face on that building?”

Peter was flabbergasted to see the footage: Deadpool, hanging from scaffolding on the side of a skyscraper in midtown, waving a bucket of red paint through the air. The helicopter filming the event pulled away, giving a wider view of the scene.

COME FIND ME BRO was splashed across the windows in ten foot letters, above a very poorly rendered image of Spider-Man’s mask.

“Are you fucking kidding me.”

No matter how worn thin he was, he saw no choice in the matter. Spider-Man would have to show up, before that section 8 bastard hurt somebody.

He hoped he could get there in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger is what happens in this chapter in exchange for having Peter in it at all. Pacing!
> 
> Comments welcome. Feel free to squeal at me for being mean to Wade. :(


	3. Shocking Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spider-Man rushes across town to confront Deadpool. He's furious about the graffiti, about all the negative media attention, and things go about as sideways as he expects them to when Deadpool is involved.
> 
> Chapter warnings: External and internal ableism, suicide, death mention, hallucinations, dissociation. Basically more of the same. It's angsty Spideypool; I'm not sure what else to say about it. Will add warnings to chapters in the future only if they're different. Please feel free to alert me to any warnings I should have included.

Spider-Man was furious. The Horizon team was at a point in the project where interruptions and absences were the worst for their overall productivity, and Peter hated having to lie about an emergency call from his aunt so that he could get out of there. It didn’t feel right to use Aunt May like that. Especially since he was rushing off to confront someone like Deadpool—of all people—but it had been the first thing that came into his head when he’d asked to be excused.

On the bright side, his coworkers would probably get a kick out of the news. The short break they’d get and the gossip following would put a boost in their morale, even if it was going to hurt _his_ morale when he got back. He could just picture the headline of the Bugle: “Spider-Man Tech Incompetent, Can’t Use Pager”.

No, that wasn’t clever enough for ol’ Jonah. Peter wasn’t in the mood right then to imagine anything better.

This was all probably a very bad idea. By that, he meant it was definitely a _horrible_ idea. Deadpool was _not_ right in the head, and now Peter was rewarding the abnormal behavior by playing right into it. When he caught up with the merc, he was going to make it clear that, in no uncertain terms, Deadpool was never to ever pull a stunt like that again. If he wanted to get in touch he would have to go through more socially appropriate channels.

Actually, scratch that. There was no circumstance that Peter could think of that would warrant Deadpool getting in touch with him. What he was doing now—answering Deadpool’s summons—was _not_ out of curiosity, or any kind of altruism, and it certainly wasn’t out of guilt. Nope, nope, and nope. He was going to diffuse a dangerous situation, and get a dangerous man off the street. That was all. Deadpool was just careless and unpredictable enough that he was guaranteed to get someone hurt even if he didn’t set out to. Peter would stop it.

It didn’t take Spider-Man long to get to the scene, but it took longer than he wanted it to. It left him too much time to simmer in his anger and resentment over being dragged from work because of something so asinine. By the time he rounded the corner, and the big ugly mural was in sight, he was wound so tight that folks watching from nearby windows could probably see it in his body language from hundreds of feet away.

The noise of the news helicopter was loud and obtrusive. As Spider-Man shot out the last webline that would bring him to the skyscraper Deadpool had painted, the aircraft did another fly by. It angled towards him and hovered, ominous and dark in the sky like a representation of his emotional state.

Spider-Man just wanted to get this over with. As he crouched on the edge of the roof across the street, he looked between the helicopter and Deadpool, who was dangling from the window-washer’s scaffolding. The mercenary had noticed him and was waving one arm at him in a hugely exaggerated arc, making him swing back and forth from the cable by which he was suspended. He was wearing some kind of harness, from what Peter could tell.

Spider-Man was tempted to flip off the helicopter, just to ruin their news footage, but decided against it. He was going to have enough problems with bad press after this event. Crude gestures on his part were something he could at least control.

“Just rip it off like a bandaid. Or like a leech.” Peter made a face under his mask, wrinkling his nose against the stretchy fabric. “If I were Deadpool, what kind of parasite would I be?”

With his rhetorical question left unanswered, he leapt from the building. Gauging distance, angle, and velocity, at close to the last second he gave a yank on the web, twisted and somersaulted in midair, and attached himself to the reinforced join between two windows a couple of stories above where Deadpool hung.

“Heyyyy baby boy!” Deadpool called up to him, waving his arms so much that red paint sloshed onto his uniform, the windows, and down to the street. “Come to join junior varsity league with me?”

“Deadpool!” Spider-Man climbed down the building towards him. “What in the _hell_ do you think you’re doing?!”

“Uh… hitting you up? I thought we could have a chat like bosom buddies!” Deadpool reached for the hanging scaffold, bouncing his weight in the harness he wore to try and hang the paint can from a hook attached to the edge.

Why hadn’t he stayed _on_ the platform? It was not designed to be used the way Deadpool was using it. Peter’s sensitive hearing could pick up the creaking noises of metal and wires complaining. That was not good. A quick scan up the building did not immediately reveal any weaknesses above, but he could tell that it was old equipment that had not been well kept. Splotches of red rust blossomed around joints on hinges, and on rivets connecting the cables to the platform itself. It was just a matter of time.

“We are not buddies, and in no way shape or form do I want anything to do with your bosom,” Spider-Man said. “What do you think this is, Cirque du Soleil?” He was so angry his hands were shaking.

Deadpool, heedless of the precarious condition he was in, began to deliberately throw himself back and forth in the harness. The swinging motion brought the scaffold cables within inches of Spider-Man’s head.

“Nah, I’d call this street art! More fun than that namby pamby performance art shit!” The merc made a pose, leaning to the side, one arm and one leg out as if he were flying. “I got something I need to talk to you about, and I figured this was the best way to get your attention!”

Letting out a frustrated growl, Spider-Man squeezed off a web towards Deadpool to yank him up out of the air. Deadpool twisted violently out of the way, and the squirt of webbing missed its mark, attaching to a window below. “No, just wait! This is important!”

“I don’t _care_ ,” Spider-Man said. “This thing isn’t solid, can’t you see that? It can’t handle this kind of abuse! There are better ways of doing literally _anything_ than the way you do them!”

“Hold on dude, I’m climbing back up! We can talk up there!”

“Are you listening to me?” Spider-Man tried again, and this time the web latched onto Deadpool’s shoulder. He yanked him up, and the wire attached to Deadpool’s harness went slack. “Just like the crane game.”

“Rude! I just want to talk to you, guy!”

A flash of light caught Peter’s eye, and before he could shout at Deadpool to _stop_ , one of Deadpool’s blades sliced clean through the line.

The entirety of Deadpool’s weight dropped, and it dropped hard. The man reached the end of the slack in the wire, and the entire platform was jerked by the sudden force. Metal snapped, it screamed in protest, and the bracket holding one of the cable pulleys flew free. It whipped and wiggled away under the release of tension, and Peter’s spider-sense sent him ducking as it whizzed through the airspace where his face had been a moment before.

Between the cable snapping, Deadpool’s weight, and the rocking back and forth he had already been doing, the scaffold swung wildly away once one end was detached. Deadpool’s scream of surprise accompanied a greater flailing of limbs.

Spider-Man went into autopilot, letting his experience and his instincts prioritize his actions. He propelled himself forward, throwing out his arms to shoot out yet another line, this time towards the hanging platform’s safety railing. It had to be brought under control.

“This is exactly why you’re such a pain in the ass!”

“Help me, Auntie Em!”

“Help your goddamn self!” Spider-Man clung to the webline, halting the scaffold’s momentum, but there was enough give in his web formula that it didn’t stop completely.

“Why did I leave the parachute behind??”

“Oh my _god_ , Deadpool!”

From the street far below, Peter heard civilians screaming, but he could not afford to divert his attention to the people freaking out. He had more important things to worry about. Like the damn paint cans. Maybe he _should_ be looking, come to think of it.

Several things happened at once. The open paint can slipped off of its hook, and other paint cans—one full, three empty—slid off the platform shortly thereafter. Spider-Man twisted his other arm to shoot a web and try and snag them, but his foot slipped on a patch of fresh paint. It was too much for his sticking powers, and he went swinging through the air towards Deadpool on the line. The position was all wrong, the speed, the angle, it was _all wrong_ , and he could not avoid the upcoming collision.

“Oof!” Deadpool grabbed Spider-Man’s arm as they crashed together. “Hi babycakes.”

Another scream of metal heralded a crashing noise from high above. “This is _not_ happening!” Spider-Man threw himself back from Deadpool’s touch, and let go of the webline to toss himself at the building again.

The equipment up on the roof gave way under the extra strain, and the scaffold began to fall.

“Down will come baby, cradle and all!”

Another flash of blades through the air. Did Deadpool just cut the line to his harness?!

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Spider-Man had no choice. The scaffold and related equipment would cause a huge amount of damage, and it had to be stopped first. Deadpool had cut himself loose, so he must have a plan for landing. Spider-Man couldn’t do anything for him.

He worked frantically to attach lines between the buildings, hoping to catch the angry pieces of metal before they could squash anyone or anything below. Back and forth he went like a real spider, using web fluid liberally to create a series of nets, until everything was finally secured.

“Fudge ripple!!”

Deadpool was not so lucky. Just as the platform jerked to a stop, Peter saw a burst of light, heard a crackling hiss, and heard the mercenary screaming as he crashed into a set of powerful electric lines.

“Oh my god,” Peter said again, quieter. Deadpool could survive that, couldn’t he? “Ohgod ohgod ohgod.”

The platform was fine. The sidewalk and a few cars were splashed with gallons of red paint, but the platform wasn’t going to fall on anyone, and he was experienced enough to design the web netting so that while the stuff dissolved it would let the thing down easy.

“Shit shit shit,” Peter said, landing on the ground and rushing to where the mercenary lay in the middle of the street. His uniform was blackened and smoking, and the air was filled with the mixed smells of ozone and burned pork.

“Uck.” Spider-Man put a hand over his mouth, suddenly feeling quite sick. “Ok, wow, this has officially put me off my appetite for spare ribs for like, ever.”

“Spider-Man! Put your hands in the air, and back away from the corpse!”

The last thing that Peter needed was the interference of the cops and news crews. They were in the process of swarming the location, now that the danger was over.

“Whoa hey, look guys,” Spider-Man held his hands up, though in a calming motion rather than in surrender. “Look, this nutjob did all this on his own, I came to stop him.”

“Yeah? Great fuckin’ job _you_ did. This mess is your fault! You made that thing fall!”

Wonderful. They were already blaming him for this fiasco. Would it really hurt for them to lay off the accusations for once? He was in no mood to hear all about his failings.

Spider-Man put his hands on his hips. “Oh really? It was bound to fall sooner or later, it was hardly up to code.” He threw an arm up to gesture towards the hanging scaffold. “Just look for yourself! It’s almost as rusted as the Titanic!”

“I think that’s an exaggeration,” some smart-ass member of a news crew said from the back of the growing crowd.

“… does whatever a spider caaaan…” came a quiet, distorted voice from the burnt red husk of Deadpool.

“Shit, it’s alive!” someone else said.

It was time for a quick exit, Peter decided. This was going to become a shit storm, and he didn’t want to be around for the fallout. Unfortunately, he didn’t want to leave Deadpool there without giving him the stern lecture that Peter was brewing up for him. As much as it pained him to have to move any closer to the human barbecue, his disgust was tempered with relief that Deadpool’s healing factor was showing itself to be up to the challenge. Maybe he hated the guy, but he didn’t want him to die.

Didn’t need another tick in the “People Spider-Man Failed” column.

Snatching up Deadpool’s body, Spider-Man slung him over one shoulder and made his retreat. “I’ll just take my leftovers and go. Sorry I can’t stick around for kickball!”

Dodging bullets on his own wasn’t always fun, and it was even less so when he was burdened by dead weight. So, it may have been that during his escape, Deadpool got used as a shield… maybe once or twice. Peter would make sure to feel bad about it later.

What could he do with Deadpool until the guy woke up? It seemed that the words Deadpool had spoken earlier had been some sort of reflex, because the man was still very much not conscious. Whether passed out or still healing, Peter had no way of knowing.

Several blocks away, Peter finally decided where he could take Deadpool: the warehouse where they’d fought Hit-Monkey. That would suit his purposes. He’d take the mercenary there, make sure he’d stay put, then come back for him later. He had to finish his shift at work, after all.

Getting back to work did not end up being an option. As soon as he had Deadpool tied securely to a chair, in the abandoned office of the old building, and was almost through the door, he heard Deadpool waking up.

“I, uh, wha…?”

Shit.

“Hey, Webmeistro, this is pretty kinky and all—under other circumstances I might like a little such-and-such if you know what I mean—“

Yes, Peter knew what he meant.

“—But right now this is kinda not cool.”

Spider-Man whipped around and jabbed a finger into Deadpool’s chest.

“Ow,” said Deadpool’s little voice.

“No. This is not just ‘kinda’ not cool. This is _absolutely_ not cool. What you did back there, that was not cool. You could have severely hurt people with that stunt. You are so damn lucky nobody got hurt.”

“Aw c’mon Spides, I had it under control! Mostly. I mean, nobody’s perfect.”

“You are the opposite of under control.” Spider-Man tossed his hands in the air. “If I had to write the thesaurus entry for the antonym of the word ‘control’, I would just put a photo of you in there and call it a fucking day.”

“All right, señor vocabulario, I get the point.”

“I don’t think you do. Why did you want my attention so bad? So bad that you’d cause how much property damage? Put how many lives at risk? Not to mention the media circus out there!”

Peter was feeling edgy enough that he hopped up to the ceiling and began pacing the room upside-down. He noticed that Deadpool craned his neck up to follow him.

“I mean, if we’re delving deep into the list of reasons why that was a shitty moronic thing to do, do you have any idea how long it’ll take this shit to die down in the news? Why should I help you with anything when you’re facilitating people hating me? Do you know what that’s like?”

The front of Deadpool’s mask worked like he was opening and shutting his mouth. He snapped his jaw shut, then said, “Do I know what it’s like to have people hate me?” A pause. “Is this a trick question?”

“The difference is _I care_ what people think about me.”

Deadpool cleared his throat and squirmed. “Uh, you know, as much as this is totally turning me on, could you maybe untie me?”

Peter’s mind was on a roll, running through every last bit of damage and cost that will have occurred because of Deadpool’s attempt to get his attention.

(“Attempt? But it worked.”)

Peter counted on his fingers as he listed off all the costs, getting up to his seventh finger bent angrily back before Deadpool interrupted him.

“So… do you want to know what I wanted to talk to you about, or are you going to keep yelling at me?” Deadpool sniffed. “I mean, whatever makes you happy. I seem to be experiencing a rare quiet moment upstairs, so I’m good to wait.”

Clenching his jaw, Spider-Man dropped down from the ceiling again. There wasn’t a reason for him to keep Deadpool tied up anymore. He’d said his piece, and if he were being honest with himself, he would think that maybe if he heard Deadpool out this time that he’d be able to stop thinking about him. Maybe satisfying his curiosity would make the matter done with.

Untying the rope was quick work, and he took a few steps back as Deadpool wiggled out of the rest of it.

Glancing at his wrist at an imaginary watch, Peter said, “You have three minutes.”

Deadpool rubbed his fingers over the top of his head. “Well, okay, that’s not a lot of time, and this is sort of complicated, but I’ll give you the gist of it.”

He took a deep breath. “It started about a month ago. Maybe two? I don’t know, time is hard to tell because I never keep a watch, every day is exactly the same, and I’ve killed myself at least ten times since the snow melted, which always screws up my sense of time worse, so whenever that was that we last had snow.

“Started with shitty sleep, and maybe I don’t sleep so well anyway, but this was really bad. I’m talking next level nightmares, drowning and Cthulhu all up in my business, and I started seeing rabbits in my apartment. Was that before or after the sleepwalking? I’m not sure. Are you following me?”

“… Painfully, but I think so.”

“So I’m sleepwalking every night, and I’ve been hearing these assholes talking in my ear. Worse than it’s been in a long time, okay? And I keep waking up across town. I have _no_ idea how I’ve gotten there.

“Yeah yeah, okay, hurrying it up. I wake up in weird places, I have fucked up nightmares even when I’ve shot my brains out to shut up the fuckers in my ear—like how can you dream if your brains are splashed across a wall? Do other people do that?”

Peter sure hoped that they didn’t.

“And I’ve been seeing and hearing other things, shadows and whispers, and South Americans stalking me in the toilet. I keep burning down my safe houses or blowing them up in my sleep, so I quit going back to them and started sleeping outside. It’s all getting _worse_ , though, and I just thought…”

The flood of information was a bit much for Peter to take in. As a reflex, he looked down at his wrist, then crossed his arms quickly to hide the action. He forgot that he wasn’t actually wearing a watch.

“You thought what?” he asked. Deadpool’s description of the situation had made him wary. Some instinct was telling him that he should take this seriously. Even if it was all just Deadpool’s usual lunacy, Deadpool didn’t seem to think so, and he was a dangerous man. A dangerous man stuck on a dangerous idea was bad news.

Deadpool was quiet for several heartbeats. “I thought you could help me,” he said.

“Why _me_?”

It was after a longer stretch of quiet that the merc answered the question. Reaching up to his mask, he curled his fingers into it, and pulled it slowly off his head. He held it in his lap, gaze downcast as he continued. “The fire, with the rabbits. I don’t remember very well, but… there was a little girl. I don’t… I don’t want to hurt anybody. You, you protect people.”

Peter was too shocked by the sight of Deadpool’s mangled and scarred skin to pay as much attention to what the man had said as he wanted to. He’d heard that Deadpool was “ugly”, but he did not realize it was to this extent. Ugly did not approach anything like a suitable word to describe him. The man wasn’t a mutant, was he? Peter didn’t know nearly enough about the guy. If Deadpool was going to be chasing after him for attention, for help, or whatever, he was going to have to do a little research.

Wasn’t Steve Rogers always commenting on how people didn’t understand Deadpool?

There was a haunted look in Deadpool’s yellow, bloodshot eyes, and he wouldn’t look up at Spider-Man. Spider-Man didn’t have to wonder what had happened to the girl. The pain on display in front of him made it clear enough. What made him wonder was what sort of man Deadpool was, that he had no problem slaughtering and assassinating, but harm to a little girl would put that look on his face?

How much collateral damage had his life as Spider-Man caused those close to him? To strangers? Peter was not completely free from that guilt, but he had never caused anyone to burn to death.

Shit, was he really making that comparison? Was he even _sure_ that was true? The thought coiled in the pit of his stomach like a ball of acid, making him feel queasier than the stench of Deadpool’s burnt flesh had.

“And this, all of it, is new?” Peter had assumed that this level of crazysauce was Deadpool’s usual M.O..

“Yes, actually.” Deadpool’s pocked and stained forehead wrinkled in confusion, and he looked this way and that. Searching for what, Peter couldn’t guess. “Except… it seems better now,” he said.

“You’re really fucked up about this.” Spider-Man said. “You don’t need my help, you need to check yourself into an institution.”

“That didn’t work so well last time.”

“Point blank, your problems go _way_ beyond my ability to help you. Maybe beyond anyone’s ability.”

Deadpool scowled and pointed an angry finger at him. “Yeah? Well, maybe your self-righteous attitude is why the newspapers hate you.” He yanked his mask down over his head again and stood up.

“Look, I heard you out,” Spider-Man spat back, “and I can’t help you. I can’t fix your head, and I can’t spend all my time with you making sure you don’t hurt somebody. I told you what I think. Figure something else out. I don’t need a lecture on my attitude from a murderous head case.”

“Like _you_ keep the best company.”

“Hey, numbskull, you seem pretty lucid to me right now.” Spider-Man crossed his arms. Despite Deadpool’s obvious emotional turmoil, he was not convinced this wasn’t at least partly some sort of ruse. “Are you _absolutely_ positive this isn’t your usual brand of crazy?”

Deadpool slipped his fingers under his mask and scratched at his neck. “I did get one hell of a session of electro-shock therapy back there.”

Somewhere inside the warehouse, a series of lights blew out with a series of loud crackling pops. The bulb in the office flickered in response, and Deadpool’s reaction was immediate and violent.

“They’re back!” he said, whipping a handgun from its holster and swinging it around wildly.

Spider-Man was on the ceiling again in a wink, alarmed. He shot a wad of webbing onto Deadpool’s gun to gum it up so it wouldn’t fire. “Fucking chill. It’s just the old wiring in this place.”

“Son of a…” Deadpool held up his piece by the handle with two fingers, frowning so hard that Peter could see it through the mask.

“I’ll ask you one more time, and I’ll put this as simply as I possibly can. What, _exactly,_ do you want me to do for you, that does not include following you around all day or bringing you back to my apartment?”

Deadpool shucked his gun back into the holster, and held up a finger. He cocked his head to the side like a dog, flapped his jaw again silently, then sighed. “I don’t know.”

Peter gave in to the urge to swear, in the most colorful language he could think of, while he crawled out of the room along the ceiling. He continued to curse and mutter to himself as he left the warehouse entirely, far beyond done with the situation.

“And don’t call me again!” he shouted behind him before slamming the main door shut.

It was long past time that he got back to Horizon and continued with the rest of his day. Then he’d have to go home and wash his suit, because Deadpool’s scorched smell got all over it, and it was fucking nasty.

  


Long after Spider-Man left him alone—again—Deadpool stood in the center of that room, frozen in both confusion and indecision. The voices had been right, he knew: he was nothing but pathetic, and Spider-Man was far too good to want to bother with him at all. He didn’t deserve anyone’s help. It had been stupid as hell for him to ask for it in the first place.

What, exactly, _had_ he hoped that Spider-Man could do for him? Spider-Man was right.

It was far too quiet. He had no idea how long he stood there staring at nothing, trying to feel his way around the echoing hole he felt in his head. The silence had not been fully obvious while Spider-Man had been there, because either one or the other of them had managed to fill up the airspace with words just fine. Now that the guy had left, it was painfully clear that the voices Wade had been hearing were also gone.

“Hello?” he said, hunching his shoulders and looking around nervously. As if the voices would come back all at once.

Nothing.

“Oh god.” He put his head in his hands, taking a deep breath. Were they gone? The pressure in his head was far less than it had been, and the voices had not made a single peep since he’d been there.

At that moment, it felt like the greatest relief he’d felt in his entire life.

Falling back down into the chair that Spidey had tied him to—he would construct a fantasy about that later—he let himself enjoy this relief, even while his thoughts worried at it like a dog with a rawhide chew. He rubbed his tongue front and back on the roof of his mouth, going over what had happened.

_I did get one hell of a session of electro-shock therapy._

Was that it? Was that really all it had taken to get that shit to shut up? It was so simple. What did he need Spider-Man for? All he had to do was periodically electrocute the shit out of himself! When the voices and hallucinations came back, or if he started sleep walking again, he could just stick a fork in an electrical socket and he’d be cured again! He could actually go back to one of his crash pads.

“Sleep in a real bed again!”

Wade giggled, giddy as a child, and kicked his legs in the air. “You’ve just won Double Jeopardy!” It felt good to solve a problem on his own. He didn’t need anyone else. Didn’t _want_ anybody else, really. What good was Spidey for?

A few rather graphic images slipped themselves into his brain theater, and he froze. Hmm, Spidey was good for _that_ , sure. Yeah, all right, he still admired Webs. The guy was driven hard to do good, to _be_ good, no matter how much people hated him. It was somehow sexy as fuck. That kind of dedication had always looked good on Nate, after all, and it looked good on Spider-Man too.

Not as good as that skin tight spandex looked, though. Wade bit his lower lip, as his fantasy fleshed itself out without any help from him.

“Uh… hey, Deadpool?”

Deadpool bolted upright in the chair, reaching for his gun. It was stuck in the holster with webbing and wouldn’t budge.

Which was just fine, because in the doorway there was Spider-Man again. Not danger. It was almost as if he had summoned the guy out of thin air.

“Spidey?”

Spider-Man stepped into the room and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, Deadpool. I’m sorry. About blowing you off, and yelling at you, and tying you up. All of it. You’re not a total bad guy. I can try to trust you. And I’ll do what I can to help.”

Wade was next to the guy in a second, grinning like crazy and pumping Spidey’s hand like nobody’s business. “Thank you, thank you! I promise you won’t regret it. I won’t let you down!”

Spider-Man nodded.

“And please, call me Wade. Wade Wilson.”

To his shock and delight, Spider-Man lifted off his own mask and grinned at him. “Hi, Wade.”

“Huh. Never figured you for a blond.”

Was this the beginning of a porno, or the beginning of a buddy flick? Wade couldn’t decide. Maybe it was both. He hoped it was both.

Boy, Spidey sure had a nice pair of blue eyes.

  


_Beep. Beep. Beep. DING!_

Peter stretched his arms over his head, shook his dark brown hair, and let out a grunt. Ever since he’d gotten home from Horizon, he’d been going through a collection of photos that he was going to try to sell around town. It wasn’t all just Spider-Man; he was trying to get some extra cash with human interest sorts of photography. People, even animals and plants sometimes. Get his artsy fartsy on to try and combat stress.

It hadn’t been going so well. Nobody wanted to buy his work except Jameson with the Spider-Man photos. He was still plugging away at it, though, and that evening he was running the contents of his memory card through a few customized filters in Photoshop. Sometimes he had to tweak them manually, which gave him something to focus on.

With the microwave done doing its thing, he stood up and stretched some more, striding across his small apartment to pull his hot pockets out.

As much as he loved the things, the food wasn’t doing much to settle his stomach. After rehashing the afternoon’s events over and over in his mind, he was finally starting to worry about Deadpool for Deadpool’s sake. There was _so much_ that he didn’t know about him. Peter could sling all the judgments around that he wanted, but his gut was at odds with his opinions. His _very strong_ opinions about the man.

“Hah!” Peter huffed around a bite of food. Damn. Burned his tongue. Stupid cheap-ass microwave couldn’t heat these stupid hot pockets evenly.

When he sat back down at his desk, and dropped his plate down next to his keyboard, he pursed his lips and let out a long sigh. He folded his fingers together behind his head, and leaned back to look up at the ceiling.

“I’m going to have to talk to Steve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so sorry... T_T I made myself cry a little.
> 
> Next chapter: Dead bodies, nightmare fuel, and more arguing. (Will probably end up writing more oneshot fluff for my own therapy before the next chapter's posted.)


	4. Doused

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter goes on with his life, trying to do his thing while being distracted thinking about Deadpool at inopportune moments.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter because I'm posting what I've got that I think looks halfway decent. The rest of this chapter I've gotta completely rewrite and I don't have time for that yet. I just wanted to go ahead and update this fic so y'all know it's still in the works, and to assure you emphatically that I have a solid plot as well as a satisfying ending to this fic. I have full confidence in where I'm going with this. I have a lot of stuff planned that you're gonna like. I don't want to make any specific promises, _but_ , there'll be hurt/comfort and cramped spaces and protective!Wade and all kinds of fun tropes. As well as more angst and some satisfying revenge. (I may also be open to doing some fanservice if anyone has any particular ideas.)

The office coffee machine hadn’t been touched in over an hour. Nobody had taken the last few ounces of liquid, and so nobody had turned it off or refilled it with fresh grounds. As a consequence, whatever was left in the pot was burned to shit, and the acrid smell was starting to get to Peter. He silently prayed to the newspaper gods, or Anansi, or _whoever_ was going to listen to him, that someone at the Daily Bugle would please, _please_ do something about the coffee so he wouldn’t have to take matters into his own hands.

Standing around on a sprained ankle in Jameson’s office, waiting for him to get off the phone so that he could sell him his photos, was bad enough. Peter didn’t want to walk across the main office to deal with the smell. As it was, he was focusing very hard on not giving in to the urge to find a seat, or even allowing a wince of pain to twist his expression. JJ would probably find it rude, and would be more inclined to find something wrong with his work as an excuse to pay him less for it.

A staff job would really be nice. Peter wouldn’t have to worry about the issue of being underpaid anymore, but Jameson was still refusing to give him one. Peter must get a _look_ on his face when he’s about to ask again, or Jameson had some secret psychic newspaper editor ability, because somehow he knew when Peter was about to ask for the umpteenth time and Jameson would just shout _NO_ at him before Peter could even open his mouth. He was starting to think that perhaps it was about time that he gave up.

Still, there was the chance that maybe he could wear Jameson down eventually. Peter had been tempted to stop selling photos for a few weeks just to make Jonah miss his work, but he didn’t have enough money in savings to be able to afford the dip in income. If he threatened to sell his photos to another paper, Jameson would blow his top and might never buy anything from Peter again, so that idea wasn’t going to work either. Other publications in town weren’t as obsessed with running editorials about Spider-Man, either, and of course that had to be his bread and butter.

It was something that he’d have to keep brainstorming about.

The minutes continued to drag on. The pain in Peter’s ankle began spreading up his calf inch by inch, and without realizing it he was clenching his jaw, which caused the beginning of a splitting headache. He finally decided to put all his weight on the other foot, and try to disguise what he was doing as best as he could.

Peter felt a tap at his elbow, and turned his head to see Betty Brant standing next to him, her long fingers plucking at his sleeve. “Excuse me Jonah, can I steal Peter for a minute?”

Jameson continued his phone call without replying verbally. He waved a hand at them both, shooing them out of his office with his usual impatience.

Once they were beyond the door, Peter frowned. “Betty? Why—”

“You looked very uncomfortable, Peter,” Betty said. She pointed down at his feet. “Are you trying to hide an injury?”

“Actually I’m breaking in some new Gucci’s and they are just _killing_ my ankles.”

She sighed heavily and shook her head. “Find a seat somewhere and relax. Do you need an aspirin or something?”

“You’re too nice, Betty. I’ll be fine once I can sit.”

“If you say so.” Betty shrugged. “You know where I’ll be if you change your mind.”

“Uh huh.”

When Betty wandered off, Peter’s gaze zeroed in on the damnable coffee machine. If he was going to be allowed to sit, he might as well take care of that problem. There were two chairs along the wall near the drink station, so he would be walking over there anyway.

The dozen paces wandering around the desks and across the large office were horrible, and Peter was unable to keep himself from limping just a little bit. It hadn’t been hurting that bad when he’d arrived at the office; this was all his fault for standing so rigid for so long.

He poured the last of the burned coffee into the sink, popped the hatch on the commercial-grade coffee maker, refilled it, and stuck a new bag of coffee grounds into the brewing compartment. After flicking the switch, he let himself sit down and enjoy the sounds and smells of fresh coffee.

Ok, so it wasn’t the greatest. Jonah wasn’t going to fork out for the high quality grounds, but it was a significant improvement over the burned coffee smell. His throat had been itchy all day already from inhaling too much smoke during his last street battle, and he didn’t need the added sensory aggravation.

Peter folded his arms and crossed his bad ankle over the opposite knee, bouncing his foot and pursing his lips while he waited. His mind wandered, but not so far away that he wasn’t paying some attention to the conversations he heard going on around him. This was the biggest news center of New York City, after all. Something was always happening somewhere, and this was the fastest place to hear about it if he wasn’t actively out on the streets looking. Or listening to police scanners. Which he never did.

Being made to _wait_ was one of the worst things ever for Peter, though. It always made him think about all the things that he could be doing instead. People he could be saving. Photos he could be taking. Toenails he could be clipping.

Absentmindedly, he started chewing on a thumbnail, and only stopped when he tore off a loose piece of skin and it hurt.

Through the jumbled conversation in the newsroom, Peter’s sharp ears picked up two words that always meant something important was happening. _“…bodies… drowning…”_

That was Robbie’s voice. Bodies, plural. Focusing his attention, Peter sought out the man himself. The editor was across the room, talking to Betty.

“Down at the lower docks?” Betty was asking. Peter could see her frowning. “How many have they found?”

“Ten, so far. All male,” Robbie said. He looked down at a folder he was holding.

“Shit.”

“That’s not the worst of it. They were all shaved bald, and there are surgical marks on their scalps. We’re still waiting for the medical reports, but someone is obviously experimenting on the poor bastards.”

Betty covered her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh my god.”

This was precisely why Peter hated waiting. Now that he’d had to wait, he’d had time to hear about this incident, and he was going to have to leave immediately to investigate whatever was happening at the docks. Couldn’t the universe give him a break? Maybe just for five minutes? Long enough for him to sell his photos?

Hopping up from his seat, Peter turned toward the exit and rushed for it with no consideration for his leg. It would be feeling better in a couple of hours, anyway. Those types of injuries never lasted long for him.

With his hand on the door, Peter heard an angry shout behind him.

“PARKER! Where are you going!” Jameson demanded.

“Sorry mister Jameson! Emergency!”

“Come back and sell me some photos!”

Peter ignored him, and did his best to ignore the continued shouting that followed him until the door closed shut behind him.

—————

There were nice docks in New York City. There were some really cool places located on docks, in fact. There were boat tours, speed boat rides, a military museum, and other tourist traps.

There were also very not-so-nice docks. The kind of place where bodies got dumped, where nefarious and badly dressed individuals carried out their schemes, where the legitimate daytime activity turned criminal at night. Those were the docks that Spider-Man typically visited, as he rarely had the time, money, and desire simultaneously to patronize the more amusing locations.

That, plus why did he need to see the space shuttle at the museum when he’d actually been to space with the Fantastic Four?

The soreness in his ankle had calmed down by the time Spider-Man arrived at the location he’d overheard Robbie and Betty talking about. The sun was setting, and details were fuzzy in the dusk light conditions, but that didn’t bother his sharp eyes too much. He caught sight of the yellow police tape marking off the latest body dump site, and in moments he had leaped between warehouse walls and street lights to bring himself closer.

Perched on a cargo crate, hiding in the shadows, he took stock of the situation.

_Broken street lights. Smashed security cameras._ He snorted. _Are they_ trying _to invite trouble around here? Or is that part of the trouble?_

There was not even a hint of a buzz from his spider sense. Waves on the river lapped gently against the shore, cars and busses roared in the city, and everything seemed to be in order.

That was usually an indicator that things were going to turn to shit soon.

It was still early, yet. He’d patrol up and down the shore tonight, and return to this spot later during that sweet spot in the night when the darkest sins were usually committed. If he could catch whoever was dumping the corpses in the river, he could get some answers.

With the quiet of evening settling in, away from the restaurants and nighttime activities of the city, Spider-Man’s mind wandered to Deadpool. He had not done his homework on Wade Wilson like he’d decided to do, and it was nagging at him now for some reason. Maybe he’d been procrastinating tackling the issue, and only making excuses by telling himself he was waiting until he ran into Steve Rogers. Maybe he’d been hoping that Deadpool had decided that he didn’t need Spider-Man’s help anymore.

That Deadpool was highly unstable was a given fact. Yet Peter kept remembering the look on Deadpool’s face when he’d told his story about what had been happening to him lately. The burned building, the little girl. The memory wouldn’t leave him alone, actually. During times when he wasn’t actively thinking about something else, it would creep in and he’d hold onto it for a while, rolling it over and over in his mind. He wished he could put it down.

“Shit,” he swore under his breath, reaching for his phone and lifting the bottom half of his mask so that his voice would be more clear. Scrolling through his contacts, he picked Steve’s number. Captain America could explain to him why Deadpool was just “misunderstood”.

The line rang and rang until it went to voicemail. Peter swore again, dragging a hand down his face. “Hey, Cap, it’s your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Look, call me back when you can. It’s not an emergency.” He hung up and replaced the phone in his pocket. Should he have mentioned Deadpool? Been more specific in his message?

_Time to get back to the dump site. I’ve wasted enough time._

The spot was just as quiet as when he’d left it. Fighting frustration and impatience, Spider-Man swung himself over to a ship docked nearby that would give him a good vantage point in case something else came up. He would wait there and keep watch.

While he stuck himself near the rear of the ship, hanging off the side like a giant circus barnacle, his thoughts bounced between the problem at hand and the problem of Deadpool. Where were the bodies coming from? What was happening to Deadpool? What was the purpose of the experiments on those victims? What if something bad happened because Spider-Man hadn’t helped Deadpool?

Focus. _Focus._ He had to focus on his current mission. He wouldn’t put off the Deadpool issue any longer, he promised himself, as long as he could focus on this problem right now. Otherwise, there was no point at all to him being out here in the first place, with the night getting colder, the stink of rotten fish and garbage in his nose, and possibly more dead bodies sunk to the river bottom that hadn’t had the chance to bloat and float yet.

Around three in the morning, Peter drifted asleep, still attached to the hull of the ship. He had enough time to dream—an unsettling nightmare about clowns—before he was rudely awoken by freezing cold water running over every part of his body.

_Rain!_ his brain helpfully supplied. As a reflexive action, he tensed and sprang off the hull, hoping to seek shelter. The slippery grime under his feet combined with his injured ankle sent him plummeting into the filthy water instead.

Only his years of experience kept him from gasping and inhaling water as the East River swallowed him up, soaking him to the skin immediately. With his powerful arms and his sticking powers he hauled himself out of it as soon as he could, but that didn’t stop him from experiencing the nasty moment when he had to suck air in through his wet mask. How he _hated_ that, and this was the worst, grossest water he’d fallen into outside of his trips to the sewer. Or battling Hydroman.

Teeth chattering violently, he wrapped himself around the ship’s anchor chain and yanked his mask up over his mouth so that he could gulp down some relatively fresh air. The smells of gasoline, diesel fumes, and organic decay were still present, but at least there was also some oxygen.

The sun was starting to come up. Why on _earth_ had he fallen asleep like that? If anyone had dumped anything during the night, he had completely missed it.

He coughed a few times, tasting the river on his tongue. “Ugh, _uck_ , that is _disgusting_.” Why was this always the way his life worked? Maybe if he hadn’t coined the phrase “Parker Luck” it wouldn’t plague him constantly.

“Fuck Deadpool though,” he said. “This is why I hate distractions.”

Filled with uncharitable thoughts and feelings about every aspect of his life, Peter made his way back to his apartment. He needed to shower, shove his cell phone into a bag of rice so it would dry out, and hopefully he could get some precious hours of sleep before he had to be up again in the morning.


	5. Not This Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deadpool and Spidey hang out. But it's not as great as Deadpool hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. 8D So, who thought I had abandoned this story? Well I didn't. So here's an update finally. After... more than a year....
> 
> ENJOY!
> 
> Content warnings: electrocution, mentions of electroshock therapy, mentions of suicide.

Having Spider-Man around made all the difference for Deadpool. The voices in his head hadn't come back, and he felt the same relief that he'd felt when he’d quit seeing and hearing the boxes a few years earlier. Who knew that having a massive dose of electricity blasting through him could have a silver lining? Not that he would ever voluntarily sign himself up for electroshock therapy--that shit was human-experimentation-level nightmare fuel--but on a lethal level, one that he survived thanks to his healing factor, it had done him a world of good.

Or was it Spidey that was the catalyst for their disappearance? Had they quit whispering in his brain before or after Spidey had decided to stick around? He couldn’t be sure, which was frustrating. But, all things considered, he could handle that sort of mild frustration.

After weeks of sleeping on rooftops and under bridges, it was a relief to finally return to sleeping in a bed without worrying about exploding or murdering anyone or anything he didn’t _mean_ to explode or murder. Things had changed a lot for him after Spider-Man had agreed to help him. And because he wanted to keep things comfortable for Spidey, he went to his last remaining safe house in Harlem.

It wasn't perfect, even so. It was filthy, full of junk, and had a pest infestation. Flicking the light on when they first entered--in the few moments before it went POP! and blew out again--a few dozen roaches scurried for the shadows. But it didn't have blood and food stains everywhere, and it had functional plumbing. So, bonus!

That wasn’t to say that the two of them were getting along very well. Initially, Spidey had been very nice to him. Even helped him clean up the place a little. Although he didn’t actually do any work, but sat up on the wall and kept Deadpool company, pointing out things that should be picked up. He had to leave when Deadpool fumigated the place, though, because he couldn't survive the level of chemical warfare that he subjected the insect population to. 

Maybe he'd been a bit demanding and had complained the whole time about what a slob Deadpool was, but that was to be expected. It wasn't as if it weren't true. 

After that, he’d popped in and out, going off to do his business and coming back within a couple hours.

They even went out to the zoo one day. It was perfect weather for it, and Deadpool was so happy about the company that he didn’t even mind the staring public. Even though the stares were worse than usual. As if the good citizens of New York City had never seen him or Spider-Man hanging around public places before.

It was like one of those 80’s buddy movies. They laughed, joked, ate hot dogs, threw rocks off of bridges, and fed pigeons in the park. Deadpool found himself skipping and singing all those campy buddy songs, and Spidey sang along with him.

It was the best time that Deadpool had ever had.

For a few days.

After the initial fun was over, Spidey grew more and more critical of him. They’d be having a good time and Spidey would throw in some nasty comment and start an argument. It was almost as if he were doing it on purpose.

Deadpool grew increasingly frustrated with him. Sure, the hallucinations had disappeared, and the voices were gone too, but the things that Spidey would say to him sometimes started sounding an awful lot like the shit they used to spew at him.

The worst argument they had was about something so stupid that Deadpool couldn’t even remember what it was halfway into their shouting match. The insults started coming, and he’d had enough.

“ _Excuse me._ Somebody call the conductor to get you off the crazy train,” Spidey said, perched up on Deadpool’s counter. “Your mother must have dropped you on your head as a child, Wade. Repeatedly.”

“So it’s gonna be like that? Your mother musta shaken you too much.”

“ _Your_ mother must not have shaken you _enough_.”

“Your mother raised an asshole,” Deadpool said. Spidey had said some asshole things in the past, but he’d never been _this_ much of an asshole.

“Yeah? Well your mama’s so stupid, she put two quarters in her ears and thought she was listening to 50Cent.”

“Fuck off, Webs. Do I talk about _your_ mother like that?” Deadpool scowled, grabbing a beer out of his fridge and slamming the door. The rest of the beer bottles inside rattled as the whole thing shook.

“ _My_ mother didn’t raise a drunken reprobate.” Spider-Man put a hand to his chest, pulling off his mask. Blond hair fell across his forehead, framing his pretty blue eyes.

“You want reprobate, I’ll _give_ you reprobate,” Deadpool said, hating Spidey in that moment for his beautiful face and his perfect hair and his clear eyes. Deadpool set his beer down and lunged at him.

Spider-Man evaded him with a snide laugh, as he did every time Deadpool tried to touch him. “Rude!”

The argument continued, the two of them throwing insults at each other while Deadpool tried to throw punches. Spider-Man consistently evaded him by jumping away, either up to the ceiling or across the room. Even when he wasn’t trying to get away from Deadpool, he’d had some serious personal space issues ever since he’d started coming around, and hadn’t allowed Deadpool close to him at all.

Even if it was a punch in the face, Deadpool still would’ve appreciated some physical contact.

“You know,” Spider-Man said finally, glued to the upper corner of the living room. “I’m not feeling very appreciated here. I’m gonna hit the road, and you can fuck off and take care of your damn self until I feel like coming back.”

Spider-Man pulled his mask back on. Just before it fully covered his face, Deadpool caught sight of some blistering burns on his cheek that he hadn’t noticed before. “Hey, Spidey, wait. Your face.”

“Nope! Not interested! Bye!”

“Spidey!” Deadpool rushed after him as he slipped out the window, leaning out into the open air to watch him swing away. He frowned and sighed. That whole thing had gotten away from him.

Why was Spidey being such a jerk? Deadpool obsessed over that question over the next few days. He racked his brain trying to remember a specific instance, or something that Deadpool might have said that pissed him off, that made Spidey turn into a major asshole. He’d turned nastier than he ever had been before, as far as Deadpool could remember. It almost made him wish that Spidey had not offered to help him at all, even if that would’ve meant he’d still be sleeping on random rooftops and scraping pigeon shit off his suit every morning.

The wall crawler didn’t come back in all the days that Deadpool was fretting about what he’d done. Unfortunately, the nasty voices in his head did. They started off quiet, as if they were garden variety intrusive thoughts, but in bits and spurts they began to hound him something fierce. When Spider-Man still did not return after a week, and the voices were plaguing him every waking moment, he finally fled the apartment. There was no way he was going to risk a repeat of what had happened before. He couldn’t bear the thought of accidentally hurting anyone else.

While he wandered the city sidewalks, dejected and alone, he thought back to before when the voices had left him alone. Extreme electroshock therapy might just do the trick again. When he couldn’t trust his brain, he had to trust specific facts and come to conclusions based on those facts, and the fact was that the voices had shut up after he’d been zapped to death.

Having his conclusion, he set off towards the north end of Astoria. Since Electro was in jail, and it would be bad behavior to set him loose just for this one thing, he knew the perfect spot to implement his plan. Go big or go home, right?

———

Spider-Man felt restless and edgy as he swung around town for what felt like the hundredth time that night, and the criminal element of New York wasn’t cooperating with his desire to pummel something. Why couldn’t he have a normal hobby to relieve stress, like needlework or fantasy football? Then he would at least understand what the hell Flash was talking about in his occasional email from where he was serving overseas.

Needlework was something he almost already did, when he had to make suit repairs or new suits from scratch. It was amazing how well he knew his own proportions because of his need to craft form fitting outfits.

But no, his hobby was punching bad guys. The problem with that was when there were bad guys that he couldn’t punch because he didn’t know who or where they were. Like all these bodies washing up. People who had been experimented on. Where the hell were they coming from? Who was doing this to them? Spider-Man wasn’t a _detective_ , he was a vigilante and the problems he liked the most were the kind he could solve with his fists and his motor mouth.

Unless he could find a scientific solution. He liked when that happened. Using his science brain felt good too. In this instance, unfortunately, he couldn’t do that either. Aside from the surgical cuts and the occasional shaved heads, there was no evidence remaining on the victims to link them to what had happened to them.

Yeah, he knew this because he’d checked. Breaking into the morgue was no small matter, but if he had to play _detective_ for once he didn’t have very many other options. In addition, he didn’t know if it was something that was worth the attention of the entire Avengers team, so he wasn’t going to drag on their resources for this.

Besides. This was his job. He didn’t want to share this one, for some reason. Plus, they knew about it already and hadn’t decided it was within their purview, so he wasn’t going to nag.

Crouched on a ledge overlooking 7th Avenue just south of Times Square, Spider-Man’s cell phone rang. When he saw that it was from Steve Rogers, he hoped it was news of something he could put his fist into.

“Speak of the devil!” Spider-Man said as he answered.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” Spidey said in a sing-song. “I was just thinking about you.” Captain America practically _was_ the Avengers, so it wasn’t much of a stretch.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line, then Steve said, “I’m calling you back about your non-emergency.”

Spider-Man sucked his teeth and leaned back on one hand. “Yeah, okay. You got my message. Good. Yes, of course you did.”

“I have time for a non-emergency call right now. What’s on your mind, son?”

“All right, well, you know how you’re always talking about how Deadpool might be whack in the head but he’s mostly misunderstood?”

“Those aren’t exactly the words I’ve used, but yeah. What’s going on? Spit it out.”

Spider-Man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose through his mask. “So, I’m wondering if you can give me more information on this. What do you know about him? Because he was nagging me for help with this _problem_ of his, and I blew him off because he’s crazy, but I’m having sort of second thoughts about it because the guy actually seemed—y’know—upset. But I know that he’s impossible to lock up, and SHIELD uses him sometimes for jobs so they don’t _want_ to lock him up as long as he isn’t causing _too_ much trouble, and I can kind of—”

“Whoa hold on, stop. Is there a _specific_ question in there?”

“What super special knowledge do you possess about him that makes you say he’s misunderstood? Because he just seems like a psycho to me.”

“You do understand that behavior is informed by experiences. Mine is. Yours is. And Deadpool’s is. His experiences happen to be different.”

“Yes, Deadpool is real experienced in murder and mayhem.”

“I can’t solve this for you, son. You want to know what’s up with him, you’re going to have to ask him yourself. Just be careful.”

This was turning out to be way less helpful than Spider-Man was hoping. Why was Steve trying to be all Wise Older Person with him? “Why do _you_ trust him?”

“Look, trust is a _big_ word. I didn’t say that I trusted him. Just that I understand him somewhat. _My_ experience with, and knowledge of Wilson _informs_ me to give him a chance.”

Groaning, Spider-Man threw himself back onto the rooftop and flopped his free arm across the gravel. “Ugh, you’re _killing_ me here. One itsy bitsy clue? The guy was practically stalking me begging for help and--”

Before he could continue, Spider-Man suffered another interruption, this time in the form of sirens wailing from the street below.

“And…?” Steve prompted.

Finally, some real action he could distract himself with! “Sorry Cap, gotta run. Duty calls!” Before Steve could interject, Spider-Man hung up on him, and tucked the phone away into its hidden pocket at his waist. He shot out a webline and followed after the emergency vehicles, which quickly turned a corner and headed straight for the river.

To save energy, he hitched a ride on the back of a police cruiser and tucked himself down as tight against the roof as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was draw too much attention from the other cops. Although, he’d done this enough that they were probably used to it. They had bigger things to worry about than a vigilante passenger anyway.

Over the Queensborough bridge they went, north into Astoria, and finally Spider-Man jumped off to attach to a nearby building when he saw the crowd of police and other first responders surrounding a Con Edison power station. He’d had a suspicion that this was where they were headed the moment they turned onto this particular street; this was one of the spots that Electro had hit in the past, and seemed to be a favorite of his.

There was no smoke coming from the building, but people were running from it screaming, which was bad enough.

“This had better _not_ be Electro,” Spider-Man muttered to himself while he looked for the best entrance to the building. “I am going to pop a gasket if it’s Electro. I am not in the mood for his shit today.”

Crossing the street, he flipped over the fence easily, and used a webline to yank up to an upper window and crawl through to the inside. The corridor he arrived in was dark, with red alarm lights flashing silently. Cursing and muttering to himself, he crawled along the ceiling until he could reach where he knew the main operations room was.

“Oh, yeah, real goddamn smart Spidey, just head right on in with zero preparation and zero idea what’s going on in here, as usual. What do you mean, you got a science scholarship to Empire State? Real smart, Spidey. Too bad he’s no longer with us. I can see the Bugle headline, ‘Rest in Pieces, Spider-Menace’. At least Jonah will get some satisfaction out of my demise.”

It wasn’t as if Spider-Man had never gone into a situation with no warning before, but he was in the mood to complain.

Arriving at the main operations station, Spider-Man quickly scanned the computers and readouts to make sure the plant was operating properly. At first glance everything seemed to be in order, so he brought his attention to the large windows looking over the main floor. Through them he could see the empty work stations, and his sharp eyes spotted movement below.

Deadpool. It was Deadpool down there. The mercenary had one of the plant engineers by the collar in front of a large control panel, and was holding a large pistol to the man’s head.

Without hesitation, Spider-Man smashed feet-first through the nearest pane of glass, and shot a webline to latch onto an upper catwalk so he could maneuver into position. He flipped in the air, landing on top of a dividing wall near the pair below.

“You know, I was hoping that it wasn’t Electro here, but I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather deal with Electro than deal with you right now.”

Deadpool shot him a look, and tapped the gun against the engineer’s temple when he rolled his shoulders. The man looked like he was so scared that he was about to pass out.

“Spidey! _Now_ you show up?” Deadpool snorted. “You were in such a hurry to get away before.”

Spider-Man wasn’t going to take any sort of bait. “Let the hostage go, Deadpool. I’ll give you _one_ warning!”

Give Deadpool a chance? Try and talk to him? Spider-Man regretted wanting to take Steve’s advice. In that moment, the furthest thing from his mind was giving Deadpool a chance instead of sending him off to be locked up somewhere.

“Oh, so it’s ‘Deadpool’ now?” Deadpool said. He shoved his hostage aside, and didn’t move to chase him as the man ran off to escape. “What happened to ‘Wade’?”

“Why on earth would I call you Wade?” Spider-Man began to slide along the top of the wall, preparing to deal with anything Deadpool might throw at him. The man was unpredictable and dangerous, and there was a hell of a lot of damage he could do running amok in a place like this.

Flinging out his hands, Spider-Man shot out webbing. Nothing stopped a bad guy like getting glued to the floor. Despite being loco in the head, Deadpool’s reaction time was enough to get him out of the way in time to avoid being trapped.

“Uh, because it’s my _name_?” Deadpool squeaked, hiding behind a bundle of large cabling. Spider-Man saw him twitching and swatting at the air by his head. “Shut up! You don’t know that!”

Spider-Man took advantage of Deadpool’s distraction to slip around behind him. With a flick of his wrist and a quick _thwip_ , he snapped the gun right out of Deadpool’s hand, and with his enormous strength he bent it in half.

“No! Sandra Bullock!” Deadpool sobbed, reaching for his ruined gun, which Spider-Man tossed off to the side without a care. He shrieked like a child when Spider-Man leaped at him, pinning him on the ground.

Spider-Man was so sick of Deadpool’s crap, he could feel himself wheezing a little. When had he been so mad at someone before that he’d started to wheeze? He was sure it’d happened before. He just couldn’t remember exactly when. Well, he was wheezing angrily _now_ , anyway.

“Eek! What happened to personal space?” Deadpool squirmed, and threw a punch at Spider-Man’s face. Spider-Man let it hit him and rolled with it so he could throw Deadpool across into the wall.

“You’re the one breaking into a power station and assaulting people,” Spider-Man said. “You expect this to go down without consequences?” He considered whether it would be fruitful to drag Deadpool to the Fantastic Four, if they’d have any way to contain him safely that maybe SHIELD wasn’t able to do. Reed’s science ability was generally better than SHIELD’s.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to dump Deadpool on his friends. SHIELD was the officially sanctioned organization, _they_ could deal with him.

Getting up into a crouch, Deadpool jumped away as Spider-Man shot another web at him, but wasn’t fast enough this time. It stuck on his leg, and he yelled and flailed his arms when Spidey hauled hard on the line to drag him across the floor.

“I wasn’t gonna hurt him!” Deadpool said. He drew one of his katanas and sliced through the webbing. Spider-Man cursed himself for forgetting the man’s blades were made of nano carbon steel. It made it so inconvenient when his opponents could shred his best non-violent suppression method.

He’d just have to use his violent suppression method then: his fists.

Leaping on Deadpool as he tried getting back to his feet, Spider-Man snagged him by the collar so hard he ripped a seam, and shook him. “Oh, you were just going to ask him out on a date, I assume? With a gun to his head?”

Deadpool grabbed Spider-Man’s wrists and tossed his head from side to side. “No, no! The noise! The noise, it’s--”

Letting go with one hand, Spider-Man yanked it out of Deadpool’s grip and clocked him hard in the noggin. “We’re in a power plant! Of course it’s noisy!”

Spider-Man could be fighting harder. He could be hitting harder. Deadpool might not have super strength to the same extent that Spidey did, but he still packed a good punch. Spidey was just used to pulling his punches when fighting anyone who wasn’t _as strong_ as he was, but Deadpool didn’t need that courtesy. He _should_ be hitting harder.

Finding leverage against the wall, Deadpool shot a kick towards Spider-Man’s midsection. His spider sense flared just before, and he jerked back, grabbing Deadpool’s ankle and spinning him around to smack hard into a bank of computers. The electronics crumpled and sparked under the crushing impact.

“Ugh,” Deadpool groaned, fingers twitching. “That’s… _gack_ , that’s not what I meant.” He snarled. “Screw this. I tried doing it an easier way. Time for the hard way, I guess.”

“What are you talking ab— _no!_ ” Whatever Spider-Man had been expecting, it wasn’t for Deadpool to swing his sword right into a bunch of electrical cables.

Between the cables, the sword, and the smashed console he was sitting in, Deadpool’s body made a great conductor for the resulting electric discharge. Or some kind of conductor. Spider-Man threw an arm up to protect his eyes from the sudden bright flare of sparks, and dove away from something exploding out of one of the computer screens. He could smell fire, smell burning plastic and fabric, ozone and flesh. It was disgusting.

“Not this shit again!” Spider-Man peeked just enough so that he could aim his webshooter at Deadpool and yank the man’s body away and stop the current. New and more urgent alarms blared, covering the area in the most awful noise.

“Electro would have been easier!” Spider-Man shouted at Deadpool’s unconscious face. Or… was he… dead? Even if he would regenerate and come back, that was still a disturbing thought.

There was no time to put any more thought into it right then. Whatever system Deadpool had overloaded was causing a chain reaction throughout the plant, and electrical fires were sparking to life all over the place. Spider-Man cocooned Deadpool in enough webbing to keep even the Rhino immobile, and slung him over one shoulder to haul ass out of the building.

Spidey remembered what had happened before. Deadpool falling into the power lines, screaming, sizzling, burning. Had this been his goal here? To get another electric shock? Slicing into the power lines had been a very deliberate action. Why the hell would anyone willingly do that to themselves? Even Deadpool had to have a _reason_ for it.

Yeah, Spider-Man thought, staring at the chaos and the darkness outside, the result of a massive power outage. He had better have a _damn_ good reason.

While he was arguing with police outside, all with guns rudely pointed in his direction and making demands on him that he could not possibly comply with--

_“What part of secret identity don’t you fellas understand? I’m not taking my mask off!”_

_“Yes, I am very aware of what happened!”_

_“You do know that I’m a card-carrying Avenger, right? See? This is my card!”_

\--his phone went off again.

“Sorry guys! Gotta go! Keep up the good work!” Attaching a web to a nearby building’s corner, Spidey yanked himself to the outer wall, his bundle o’ Pool caught up in one arm. He skittered to the roof as quickly as he could, and dumped his cargo down just in time to answer the call before it hung up.

“Yes? Hello? Spider-Man speaking!” he said, feeling a bit out of breath. Seriously, Deadpool wasn’t heavy at all for him, and certainly hadn't given him anything close to a workout back there, why was he out of breath?

“Spider-Man. Is your business taken care of?”

“Cap! My good man! Yes, yes I was just wrapping things up.” Spider-Man nudged Deadpool’s crispy, stinking form, wrapped in webbing. “I was actually thinking about calling SHIELD for a pick up.”

There were muffled voices coming through the phone, like Steve had put his hand over the mic and was talking to someone else. This was confirmed a moment later.

“Coulson is here, and he can authorize a pick up. Who is it?”

“Incidentally, it’s Deadpool,” he said. “Funny that he should be causing trouble at the moment we were having our earlier conversation.”

“Funny is one word for it. I’m not--hold on a moment.”

Spidey nodded. “Sure, sure, take your time! I’m only facing a massive blackout here. Wanna take bets on the population spike we’ll have in nine months?”

Rogers didn’t respond. Spider-Man took to humming the Jeopardy theme and tapping his foot in time on the roof, bouncing his weight from one foot to another. He didn’t do well with waiting. Really. Being on a stakeout was bad enough, but waiting while he was on the phone made him feel itchy and twitchy.

“Coulson says no.”

Spidey blinked, freezing in place immediately. “I-uh-what?” He stuck a finger over his other ear and shook it, even if Steve wouldn’t be able to see the gesture. “I’m sorry, I thought you said Coulson said they wouldn’t pick up Deadpool.”

“He says that SHIELD doesn’t want to handle Deadpool, and the power plant has insurance.”

“You have got to be shitting me.”

“No, that’s what he said.”

“All right, let me talk to Coulson.”

Another muffled exchange. “Coulson doesn't want to talk to you.”

Spider-Man wasn't exactly surprised, with what he'd said to Coulson last time they'd talked. This was why networking skills were important. Oops.

“Well, fine, maybe I don’t want to talk to him either.”

“SHIELD has certain policies--”

“Look at the time! I gotta go. Got a Deadpool to deal with, and this whole blackout thing, you understand!”

“Spider-Man, wait--”

Spider-Man wasn’t going to wait. He was going to drag Deadpool to SHIELD, whether SHIELD liked it or not. So he hung up on Captain America, because he didn’t have time for the bureaucratic bullshit that apparently Steve could put up with.

Halfway to SHIELD’s facility, Spider-Man’s phone rang again. Without checking the caller ID, he answered it, still swinging through the air. This was only accomplished of course because he had webbed Deadpool to his back. 

“Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man speaking!” 

“Spider-Man! Are you swinging right now?”

“Tony?”

“We need you at the ferry. There's an emergency. The European delegation went over to the island today, and AIM showed up and--aw shit, just get here, okay?”

“What, did one of your prototypes go boom again?”

“Are you gonna get your webby butt out here or aren't you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I'll be there as soon as I can! A ride would be nice, though.”

“Sorry! Can't spare the tech!”

The line went dead. “Of course you can't.” Spider-Man climbed up the nearest building, grumbling about how tony needed _his_ help cleaning up a diplomatic mess. 

If he made quick tracks out to the ferry landing, he could be done helping the team and back in time before his webbing wore off. Probably before Deadpool finished regenerating, even, taking into consideration the way he looked now. Spidey sort of felt bad for him, because what could cause someone to do this to themselves willingly? This incident just proved he needed serious help that Spider-Man wasn't able to give, before whatever was bothering him caused him to inflict even more damage on the world around him. 

For good measure, Spider-Man snuck a spider tracer into the folds of one of Deadpool’s pouches under a bunch of junk. He wanted to be able to find him later just in case. 

“Look, you're a crazy son of a bitch,” Spider-Man said as he webbed Deadpool to a light post with several thick layers. “But whatever's driving you to do this shit to yourself has got to be serious. I know you can't hear me right now, but I'll be back for you and get you to some professionals who will help you whether they like it or not. Promise.”

There was no response. Of course not. 

With a sigh that was deep enough to reach into his bones, Spider-Man launched himself off the roof and swung off downtown towards the ferry landing. Dealing with this issue was so mentally taxing that he felt tired in his body.

———

Deadpool woke up alone. Alone and confused. Two awful things to be at the same time. Though he was alone because the voices in his head had shut up again, so after a moment of reflection he decided that it wasn’t so bad. In fact, he had clearly succeeded in what he set out to do by electrocuting himself. Why, though, was he on a rooftop, tied to a post?

No, he wasn’t tied to a post. He was _webbed_ to a post. With webbing. Spider-Man’s webbing. That’s right, Spider-Man had been at the power plant and had fought with him before he knocked out those wires to get at the electric shock. What the hell was he doing up here, though? Spidey had just webbed him and left him? That hurt what little feelings he had left.

“Spidey?” he called out, in case he was nearby. He waited a few heartbeats and then called out louder. There was no response. Swearing to himself, he struggled against the bonds. To his surprise, they began to give way, like the webbing was losing consistency.

Wait, wait, he knew this one. Spider-Man’s webbing dissolved after a while, right? How long was it? It had to be at least an hour, that he knew for sure. That meant that he’d been tied up and abandoned on this rooftop for at least an hour.

“What the hell, Webs??” he shouted into the air. It wasn’t fair. At least he didn’t have to stay there, since it continued to give way as he shoved against it. He also seemed to still have all his weapons on his person, so Spidey hadn’t left him unarmed. Small blessings. 

As if anything in his life was fucking blessed. 

Squirming his way free, and scraping off the last remaining bits of web, Deadpool found the nearest fire escape and got himself down to ground level so that he could get his bearings. Pedestrians passing by on the street made faces and gave him a wide berth. He smelled like charred meat and leather and blood, so he was not surprised. 

Not like he wasn't used to it anyway. He _did_ smell, and he had a well earned reputation. Even if he'd been trying to change it. 

When he arrived back at his apartment, he was surprised to find that it wasn’t empty. _Spider-Man_ was there. Lounging in Deadpool’s favorite chair like he fucking belonged there, and hadn’t abandoned him twice that week.

“Well, well, well,” Spidey said, a particularly nasty sneer in his voice. “Look who’s back from the dead.”

Deadpool scowled and stomped into his kitchen area, determined to not be friendly. “You didn’t have to leave me tied up on that roof if you were just going to come back here, asshole.”

“Wilson, my dude, a hero’s gotta do what a hero’s gotta do! And a zero like you ain’t much worth a hero’s time.” Spider-Man crossed his legs, propping an ankle up on his opposite knee, and quirked his head at Deadpool.

Bristling, Deadpool ignored the beer he was going to grab from the fridge and whirled on his uninvited guest. “What the _fuck_ are you doing back here, then?” He was so tired of getting the runaround from Spider-Man. The inconsistent treatment, inconsistent behavior. Shit, he was being worse than Deadpool when it came to consistency. Wasn’t Spidey supposed to be _the_ stand up guy?

Spider-Man shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted to say I told you so.”

Though Deadpool had no clue what he was referring to, he didn’t want to look stupid and ask what that was. “And you couldn’t say it earlier?”

Spider-Man stood up and laughed. It was a _mean_ laugh. “You don’t even remember what I’m talking about, do you.”

“Aw, Webs, you’re hurting my little fee-fees.” Deadpool drew one of his guns and pointed at the window. “Get the fuck out of my apartment. I regret ever asking you for help.”

Stepping towards him, Spider-Man got closer to Deadpool than he had since he’d been coming around. Something seemed off about him. Something was different, wrong, but what? Was it a smell? Was it the color of his costume? Was it the way he walked?

Spider-Man leaned right into Deadpool’s space and said, in a low voice, “Everything you try to do is gonna fail. You can’t even kill yourself properly.”

Deadpool jabbed a finger at Spidey’s chest, but Spidey jerked back before he could touch him. “Newsflash, bug boy, I wasn’t _tryin’_ ta kill myself.”

“Oh, really?” Spider-Man hopped onto the nearest wall and propped a hand on his hip. “Electrocuting yourself at a power station, instead of dropping a toaster into the bath like a _normal_ loser?” He laughed again. It was a _gross_ laugh. But also familiar in a way that made Wade uncomfortable.

Aside from that, it was hugely out of character for Spidey to say something that callous. “Dude, that’s fucked up. What the hell happened to you?” Was it brainwashing? Had something happened in Spidey’s personal life to turn him into such a fucking jerk?

“You wanna know? You _really_ wanna know?” Spider-Man dropped from the wall again and stormed towards him. “ _This_ happened to me!” He grabbed the back of his mask and yanked it free, and Wade shrieked and recoiled when he saw his own face staring at him.

“This is what you did to me!”

“Fuck! Fuck, you’re not real!” Deadpool staggered backwards, tripping on his own feet and going down on his ass on the filthy carpet. “You’re not even fucking real!”

How was this happening? Hadn’t the electric shocks done away with his hallucinations? The voices were gone, but they were replaced by this bullshit? Had Spider-Man _ever_ been there with him, or had he hallucinated the whole damn thing?

“Aren’t I?” Fake Spidey stalked after him, looming tall over him. _That_ was the problem. He was too tall. He was taller than the real Spider-Man. Always had been. “I’m better than the _real_ Spider-Man, who will barely talk to you. Who wouldn’t help you. Who tied you up and abandoned you more than once.”

Deadpool grabbed the front of his mask and balled the fabric up in his fists. “Fuck! Fuck! This whole time!”

“All you’ll ever have is _yourself_ , Wilson. That’s why I’m here.” Fake Spidey snorted. “Get used to it.”

“No!” From his position on the floor, Deadpool fired off a couple rounds at him. Fake Spidey didn’t move, he just started laughing as screams erupted from the next apartment over. There were two neat bullet holes in the adjoining wall.

“Going all Tyler Durden now, are we?” Fake Spidey cackled, throwing his head back. “You fucking moron!”

“God dammit!” Jumping off the floor, Deadpool ran for his bathroom where he had a first aid kit (though he wasn’t sure why, he just remembered seeing it there), and he gave the apparition a wide berth as he dashed out the door. He couldn’t stand it if he knew he’d hurt someone else doing something so stupid as firing a gun at a hallucination. He had to help them. Whether they liked it or not, he had to help them.

Fake Spidey just kept laughing at him the entire time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like, I promise that the _real_ Spider-Man and Deadpool will have plenty of one-on-one time next chapter. But I'm gonna do an update on my other fic (A Whole New World) in the meantime and switch back and forth between them. :o


End file.
